Some say that the world is a vale of tears.
I say it is a place of soul making
John Keats

I had dream where I was discussing, “the secrets within secrets,” and I awoke feeling as if I had seen through the layers, everything was crystal clear to me, however when I reached out for my notebook and pen, (always next to me when I sleep) suddenly what seemed so clear was not clear anymore, yet I could still feel the understanding of it. Then my eyes fell on a book that I had not looked at for years and by now I know never to ignore sudden attention on something. So I opened it at random, on the following:

“Like Heraclitus, Chunang Tzu speaks of a hidden principle of truth, the Tao. Why does it remain hidden, and yet seem so obvious when we are able to open it? Chuang Tzu suggests that we are misled by partial understanding. We do not think, feel, or look with the whole of ourselves. We tend to base judgements on distinctions which we have not held up to examination.” – Wing-Tsit Chan

So much of life is like this. So often I am hit with a “vow”, only to later, after living with the “vow” of understanding, to realise that there is more to it than I thought. What I thought I understood, I understood with only partial understanding. The fragmented mind is not capable of understanding the whole, yet it is the fragments of understanding that leads us closer, layer by layer to understanding of the whole. As Heraclitus of Ephesus said, “The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives signs.” Our understanding of the whole can only be perceived in symbols, it awakens in us a new paradigm of understanding.

“The pursuit of knowledge always takes place within a given paradigm, within a conceptual matrix – a womb that provides an intellectually nourishing structure, that fosters growth and increasing complexity and sophistication – until, gradually that structure is experienced as constricting, a limitation, a prison, producing a tension of irresolvable contradictions, and finally a crisis is reached. Then some inspired Promethean genius comes along and is graced with an inner breakthrough to a new vision that gives the scientific mind a new sense of being cognitively connected – reconnected – to the world: an intellectual revolution occurs, and a new paradigm is born. Here we see why such geniuses regularly experience their intellectual breakthrough as a profound illumination, a revelation of the divine creative principle itself, as with Newton’s exclamation to God, “I think Thy thoughts after Thee!” For the human mind is following the numinous archetypal path that is unfolding within it.

And here we can see why the same paradigm, such as the Aristotelian or Newtonian, is perceived as a liberation at one time and then a constriction, a prison, at another. For the birth of every new paradigm is also the conception in a new conceptual matrix, which begins the process of gestation, growth, crisis, and revolution all over again. Each paradigm is a stage in an unfolding evolutionary sequence, and when that paradigm has fulfilled its purpose, when it has been developed and exploited to its fullest extent, then it loses its numinosity, it ceases to be libidinanlly charged, it becomes felt as oppressive, limiting, opaque, something to be overcome – while the new paradigm that is emerging is felt as a liberating birth into a new, luminously intelligible universe.”

The Passion Of The Western Mind – Richard Tarnas

Within each of us, we progress from paradigm to paradigm in our personal self-evolution. Each stage of this evolution is brought about by a personal crisis, a turning point, a dark night of the soul, a soul encounter. Our personal evolutionary shifts reflects the evolutionary shifts of the greater whole.

The thirteenth century,Persian mystic Aziz Nasafi wrote that the spiritual world, standing like a light behind the bodily world, shines as through a window through every creature that comes into being. According to the type and size of the window, more or less light enters the world. Each one of us is a window on the Universe, the whole of understanding. Physicist Raynor Johnson even suggest that while in ordinary states of awareness we view the world through five slits in the tower, our ordinary senses, there are states of consciousness in which we open the roof to the sky. It is in these moments of consciousness that a new paradigm is born. Suddenly a light is lit in the darkness of our understanding.

The concept of dry intellectual knowledge can only bring you to the first layer of understanding, whereas wisdom is the essence of understanding. There are some that say that true intellect should be defined as an ability to interact with the world around you. The ability to reach out in a gesture of wanting to understand. Wisdom for me is born out of this reaching out and interaction with the world around me, and through this an inner reflection, an inner understanding of the whole is brought about. One could say that out of the bitterness (Mara) of experience, the sweetness of wisdom is born.

In Ancient Egypt the word Ais is for brain intellect, and Sia for intelligence of the heart, in other words intuition. Intuition literally means “knowledge coming in.” Yet neither wisdom nor intellectual knowledge can be gained without love, for to know something there first need to exist a desire, a love for something, for if you feel love for something there is a need to unite with what you love. In uniting with something, or at least a reaching out towards something an understanding is brought about. Knowledge means to unite oneself with the object, concept or idea one requires to understand, hence the term carnal knowledge.

“Consider the prodigious physical and evolutionary studies of Teilhardt de Chardin, which conclude that love is the underlying movement and pattern behind the universe: atoms calling each other in search of union so that they begin to constellate and form molecules; molecules in resonance yearning for the Beloved of the next stage so that they can form more complex systems; these systems yearning to form bodies; bodies attuning until they find their partner and produce more bodies with more complexities. We yearn for the gods and the gods yearn for us, so that as we are becoming enspirited, godded beings, the gods are becoming human. Likewise, earth and nature long for spirit, and spirit longs for nature; out of this longing emerges a deeply physicalized spirituality and a deeply spiritual embodiment …

Consider, too, process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of God as the loving lure of becoming the Divine Lover calling the world into becoming, as any great and true lover does with any beloved.”

Psychologist Jean Houston

“Mathematical cosmologist Brain Swimme and cultural historian Thomas Berry write of a cosmic allurement that is the bond of all matter and what we humans experience as love. It is this lure between things that drives evolution. Love is what evokes in us the desire to make our own next evolutionary leap as a species. The longing to find and join with the beloved of the soul is the allurement that pulls us toward becoming fully human. “

Bill Plotkin

It is this allurement that entices us out of our cocoons of isolation, and allows us to experience life. In the experience of life we taste and absorb experience as nourishment of the soul. Its sweetness and bitterness both alike enrich our being and creates depth to our insights and brings us wisdom that has grown through the tasting of life.

“How relevant do you think the naming is to the experiences which we are attracting? Is the naming a process to give us a comprehendible handle on the infinite and unintelligible powers involved? ”

I do believe that naming attracts experience, not because the name in itself has magical properties but because we attach to a name collective beliefs and experiences, which forms a nexus for a particular name, as such, each name evokes in us a certain paradigm of being. Out of infinite possibilities a particular name allows for particular experiences related to the nexus of the name.

What is a nexus?
Nexus – a tie, connecting principle, bond: (Roman Law) a person who had contacted a nexum or obligation of such a kind that, if he failed to pay, his creditor could compel him to serve until the debt was paid.

A nexus then is a tie, a connecting principle to particular name, that draws that which forms the egregore of the name. However it must not be seen in light of inevitable destiny, but rather as a way of freezing patterns so you may learn to read the patterns, understand them, which allows you to transcend your nexus, rather than breaking it down.

To begin with our parents or someone decided to give us a name, for whatever reasons, but really that name was given to us because our birth evoked in the namers a certain image in their minds, reflecting the name given to us. Within the name given to us the namers gave us a nexum to their past experiences. Perhaps an unconscious wish for us to transcend the tie, and to give it a new paradigm.

When you hear a name, it evokes an image in your mind, into your consciousness. The image would be a composite of all the, for example, “Bill” or “Sheila” that you know. A kind of generic “Bill” and “Sheila”. That image gets expanded on as you experience more real life “Bills” and “Sheila s”. You can say that each name comes attached with unique symbols. These would be the parameters that you begin life with, that which takes form in your first seven years of life, and expands through your personal experience.

As we all know only too well, these parameters can become like self-fulling prophesy, if you see yourself ruled by fate, and see only the outside world as causing your experiences. However these parameters, labels can be the very tools for your personal transcendence. Say someone gives you an open ended brief, you can use any medium, any subject, many no issue just come up with something amazing, not seen before. This may sound fantastic, but in reality you can become so confused by the endless possibilities open to you that you never get to do anything, our energies scattered in the vastness of infinity. However when you are given set parameters, your mind is immediately engaged in finding a way out of the limitation imposed on us. Say, what you will, but all human beings are naturally rebel born, with a drive to go beyond where our parents and ancestors had been. If I had to give one characteristic to the reality in which we live on Earth, it would be the Frontier Planet, in which we are the explorers.

As limitation always set up a need, necessity, it activates in us the creative mind, from whence I believe the old saying,”Necessity is the mother of invention” came from. Another example of this would be that say we go and consult an oracle. We go there with a question, an outside source gives us an answer in riddle form. It is well known that the oracles of Classic times never gave straight answers, but rather used analogy, paradox and ambiguity, to stimulate the individual’s imagination in a new direction so that he can, if he is able, perceive his relationship with the outside world in a different way and so change his future. The same way we can use the nexus of our naming to stimulate us creatively which enables us to find our unique path, through which to transcend our limitations.
There is in each one of us a unique set of symbols belonging to our individual consciousness and created by our experience in life. Knowing what those symbols are gives you a very good insight into the personal workings of your psyche,.This set, can be discovered through dreams, recurring incidents and oddly significant events, and shows the patterns by which the self is expressed. They function as a set of inter-related symbols which allows for individual discovery within the framework of the collective. They enable the individual to find and identify himself in terms of the group to whom the symbols are meaningful. These forms the basis of your Nexus, and so also the nexus of your personality. So your personal nexus of symbols can be likened to receiving an oracle and it is up to you to find the meaning of it, to interpret it. This is very clearly illustrated in a the following quote by Marijane Osborn and Stella Longland.

“The famous Delphic injunction, ‘Know thyself’ indicates that the key to interpreting the oracular utterances of the Sibyl lay in the degree of self-knowledge developed in the enquirer…The point that we should like to stress, is that the ability to determine the future lies not in the oracle but in the individual, not in the symbols but in the mind that uses them.
The personality can be seen as a bundle of energies which initially respond to, and later determine the world in which the individual lives, and which are created by more or less stable nexus of the personality built up in the past. Self-analysis is an attempt to understand, to perceive the many strands which make up this nexus. Our consciousness can be viewed as a minute and time-bound portion of existence which is attempting to expand into the vast and timeless unknown. A symbol is a frozen reflection of a temporal state, and its meaning changes radically with the perspective of the interpreter. Without developing the ability to perceive the patterns and so foreknow and perhaps forfend, man does not give himself the opportunity either to choose or to escape the gallows (his fate). It is in such options that freedom lies. What is not perceived inside rises up and hits us from outside. As long as we are alive we must balance and counter-balance, sift and analyze the weaving strands of our personal life.
So divination, which originally meant getting in touch with the ‘divus’, or god outside, for information about the unknown world, may be reinterpreted as the state of becoming or being divine, of getting in touch with the god within The inner self which is a double image of the external world.”“

Is the naming a process to give us a comprehensible handle on the infinite and unintelligible powers involved?”

Looking at the question in light of the Nexus of our personality and naming, it is a process to give us a handle on the infinite. It is a way of focusing energy. To try and focus on that which is beyond our comprehension, would simply be scattering our energy. Finding the universe in a grain of sand, is for me the perfect symbol of finding the Infinite within yourself.

“For whomever has not known himself, has known nothing, but whoever has known himself has simultaneously achieved knowledge about the depth of all things.” Gnostic

You can reach that which is beyond your comprehension at present, through what you can focus on. The more passionate the interest, the more focused, your whole being will be. It is by transcending our nexus, our bond, not breaking it down, that we bring something worth while to the world. Like flames on distant hill top, an inspiration for others to do the same.

“To be nothing but yourself …in a world which is doing its best, night and day to make you somebody else – Means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.” – E.E.Cummings

For me a house only becomes a home when I have planted my herb garden, lemon and lime tree.The first time I ever became aware of the word herb, it was as if an ancient knowledge base awakened in me. You can say my soul naturally delights in the contact with herbs. For me, human beings without a soul connection, are like a potted plants. Yes it can be fairly healthy, but it seems to need constant first-aid. The potted plant is far less resistant than those with their roots in the earth. Just like a fish in a pond, it can only grow relatively to the size of the pond. When you plant a potted plant out in the earth, there seems to be an immediate added glow about it. We are just like that when we make soul connection.

“At its inception, the ego is naturally narcissistic, but if it develops wholesomely, guided by both soul and nature, it identifies with an increasingly wider slice of life. A mature ego understands the occasional necessity of surrendering to – or being defeated by – a far greater than itself, sometimes during the death-rebirth encounter (when the ego surrenders to soul) and other times during ego transcendence (when ego surrenders to spirit). Ego obstructs personal development when it gets stuck, lost, or entrenched at any life stage – when it resists change, loss, grief, or radical transformation at the hands of the gods and goddesses.” – Bill Plotkin

For us to develop to our full potential it is essential to move past “the stage-stuckness”. Many of us are stuck in the past without even realising it.

Before I go any further, I feel I must give my personal interpretation of what the ego is, as there are so many interpretations of the word, by so many, that it can be confusing.

The ego means I: It is that which I perceive as my present conscious self-awareness. That part of me that makes the decisions between right and wrong, between the choices I face in life. It operates through a personal paradigm, and cognitive style. One’s personality (persona – mask) is projected through the ego. The ego is the container of what you believe yourself to be.

When I speak of Divine, I speak of something being spirit based.

When I speak of Sacred , I speak of something being soul-based.

“Matter is the vehicle for the manifestation of the soul on this plane of existence, and soul is the vehicle on a higher plane for the manifestation of spirit”

Alice A. Bailey

When we are children our senses are open; we explore the world with an open awareness. As we grow older we all too often become too selective in what we choose to experience. Our sensual interaction with the world around us becomes habitual rather than open. We choose to loose our sensitivity rather than be subjected to pain, and so stop feeding our soul.

Modern Living impoverishes the soul. What does normal living in the rat race actually offer the soul as nourishment? The soul’s voice may be quiet, but persistent in its call for us to connect. This call will often manifest within us as a restlessness, a deep yearning for something, and of course depression.

Connecting with the soul, is however, not a Gondola ride, but rather more like White River Rafting. Yet, we need soul connection to evolve, to grow. It might just be the reason why extreme sports are so popular, especially amongst the male population.

“When Dagara boys undergo their initiation ordeals, the people of the village realise that a few boys will never return; they will literally not survive. Why would the Dagara be willing to make such an ultimate sacrifice? For the boys who die, this is certainly not a therapeutic experience. Although the Dagara love their children no less than we do, they understand, as elders of many cultures emphasize, that without a vision – without soul embodied in the culturally creative lives of their men and women – the people will perish. And, to the boys, the small risk of death is preferable to the living death of an uninitiated life. Besides when we compare Dagara society with our own, we find that an even greater percentage of our teenagers die – through suicide, substance abuse, auto accidents, and gang warfare – in their unsuccessful attempts to initiate themselves.”

Bill Plotkin

In South Africa every year, many boys die during the initiation rituals. Some of these “schools” are run by people just out to make a profit and many boys die needlessly in the hands of unskilled operators. Even here the culture of Materialism invades the once sacred institutions. Yet, despite the dangers, many young men will tell you, that they do not feel that they are men, until they have been through initiation. Western culture can numb us, but cannot still the call of the soul. The voice of the soul may be quiet, but it is persistent.

“Look around you. How many Americans, regardless of age, are caught in an adolescant holding pattern, waiting for the time when thet will magically become adult? In the meantime, they will dream the infantile American Dream of wealth and power, addict themselves to alcohol and (legal and illegal) drugs, become enamored of the glittering surface of the material world, fall into puppy love and get married, readily dream the clever dreams manufactured for them by media and politicians, fight their own kind with rocketships, lasers, and nuclear bombs, worship celluloid and stereophonic personalities, become obsessed with sex, wallow in the depths of narcissistic depression, persist in self-destructive excess, dislike having to be responsible for personal actions … These signs of cultural crisis, and many more, point to the inability of culture itself to provide meaningful rites of passage …into expanded stages of growth.” – Steven Foster

Deep inside us the yearning for soul connection will not go away. But not everyone is ready to enter the forge of the soul, and soul connection cannot be pushed. Just as you cannot push to be loved, it has to be earned. Sometimes it happens slowly over time, sometimes it strikes swiftly, unexpectedly. All you can really do is to make the conditions of the self-soil as fertile as possible for soul-growth.

What we lack here in Africa, in material terms, is abundantly compensated by soul experience. You cannot speak about Africa without speaking about the soul. Even the most insensitive soul can feel its tangible presence here. Africans that emigrate always long for it. Here, I have learned to trust the saying; ” What you need to know, will come your way when you need to know.” It has been proven to me over and over again, and sometimes it comes from the strangest sources. I can truly say that I lived a rich soul life, blessed by the humanity around me.

I look back at my life and I am filled with the wonder of the exquisite timing of my unfolding. With grace I step into my being. Through the radiance of my being, my living awakens the seeds of my becoming. Carefree as a child in loving embrace, I trust in my soul’s “knowing of being in place”, that strengthens my body to follow the destiny my spirit presents to me.

“Each individual, being a conception of the divine mind, is held in that mind as a perfect idea … We have been perfectly conceived and are always held in the perfect mind, as perfect beings.”

“If we choose to act upon a desire we will set in motion a series of causes and effects that will guide us to our true destiny.”

One can truly see the Divine Trickster’s hand in our desires. It is through our choices that we have free will, and free will in turn is the agent through which consciousness is developed. When we were young children; we feel a desire and act upon it. We would then have seen certain effects swing in motion. Some of the effects would have pleased us, other effects would have been better to avoid. We desire to touch the flame and it burns us, so we learn to be careful about flames and fire. Yet we also learn what flames and fire is. We can appreciate its beauty from a distance or use its heat for practical purposes. Then depending on your individual inclinations, some youngsters might for example desire to experiment with fire. Some might use it to cook with, some might use it to create art with, and yet others might experiment with its destructive qualities. This will in turn lead to further educate the experimenter of both the inherent qualities of fire and the inherent desires within him or herself, thus revealing to us more about our true desire.

However, say some boy one day decided to burn some dry grass to see how it burns. What he was not aware of was that there was a wind blowing and a lot of other dry grass around. Innocently he lights the fire. The wind picks up some of the burning pieces of grass and ignites the dry grass in the surrounding area. The fire gets out of hand and causes destruction that he could not have imagined. Whatever the effect his innocent acting upon his desire had, it will effect his future life. How he reacts on the unfolding events will reveal his particular destiny.

As we grow older, our desires become more unique. We might all desire to appease our physical but each one of us will have unique preferences as to what particular type of food we hunger for, if we have a choice, which further reveals more about who we are as individuals. Each time we choose we set in motion both desired and undesired effects, because we cannot know everything. We can act only from what we know, which is always limited in vision. What we know is what we are aware of. Awareness is like the beam of a flashlight; It is a flow of illuminating light towards an object. What we think we are is only a small fraction of who we are. Jung described it as a small, bright spot on a large sphere. Our normal consciousness awareness represents the small bright spot, whereas what we are unaware of, our unconsciousness, the vast unexplored sphere of the universe, of the whole. We are aware of about 10 – 15 percent of our mind’s thoughts, experiences, feelings, memories and beliefs. Although we are unconscious of 85 – 90 percent of our thoughts, feelings, experiences, memories and beliefs, they do shape our lives.

Each time we feel a desire we must choose whether to act upon it or not. The effects of our choices are going to contain reactions stemming from both elements of what we are conscious of and what we are not conscious of. The Trickster uses effects of the elements we are not conscious of, to further educate our awareness and steer us towards our destiny.

Sometimes our choices may lead us to places where there seem to be no way out, and it appears as if we are left with only Selchie choices. Yet, those situations in itself will contain aspects that will help us to unfold our souls, as those situations would never be situations that we would willingly choose. Yet, in retrospect we can see no matter, how hard it was it was necessary for our evolvement as human beings. In those situations it may appear to us as if we are achieving nothing, that in fact we are regressing, but deep below the surface radical changes are being effected on our being in becoming.

It may appear unbearable to us, as every solution we can think of cannot bring satisfactory solutions. In those situations we find ourselves as conscious beings within the womb. All we really can do is learn to float in the womb’s ocean. We have to partly surrender in trust; that we can float and partly participate in staying afloat, until the process of our unfoldment is complete.

In those situations we reached the limits of our imaginations; all the answers seem to lie beyond the horizons of our imagination. We have reached the state where we must surrender to the processes of our enfoldment. That which we think we are needs to undergo a radical change in order to embody a new consciousness which will contain the answer to our dilemma. It will contain the capacity of an expanded imagination, well beyond our previous horizons.

How long can we expect to be in such a state of liminal floating? That depends upon divine grace, and we cannot tell the duration of time. It may not even occur within the present lifetime, or it may only provide answers to the next generation. Our very quandary however, will provide questions that will lead to answers for either ourselves or the next generation. There is a solution to every challenge, we must first however, develop the capacity of consciousness to receive the answer and to comprehend it.

Desire is the cause that impregnates the seed of our unfolding. Within the embryo of our unfoldment is contained possibilities generated by past generations’ desires which in our unfolding form might come in fruition, or develop further, so that in future generations it can come into fruitition.

Whether we choose to act upon a desire or not, it will have an inner or outer effect.

(Scientific studies found that genes can be turned on and off by environmental signals – including thoughts, feelings and emotions – from outside the cell. )

The first thing I did was to reach for my favourite dictionary (before I saw the rest of the post), Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary (1901). To my surprise there was no word “moron” in it, only the word morology. Morology means foolish talk and comes from the Greek word moros, a fool. At first I thought something must be wrong with my eyes, otherwise why can’t I find it? Then I realized that the word moron must be relatively new.

So, I did a search to find out when it first came into common use;

Moron was originally a scientific term, coined around 1912 by psychologist Henry Goddard from a Greek word meaning “dull” or “foolish”, and used on the English version of the “Binet Scale” of human intelligence. The Binet Scale was developed in the early 1900’s by Alfred Binet, a French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test, the basis of today’s IQ test. The Binet Scale went approximately as follows:

The words were rather popular since 1970s until there came some changes. Today both of these words have been changed in the IQ test with mild, moderate and severe retardation which is not a great word either, from what I know we use the word physically challenged now and not retarded anymore.http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/31076

Now the words, imbecile, idiot or moron are words that I personally never use, because lets face it no matter how brilliant you are, in some areas of life, you will act like an idiot, moron or imbecile. Idiot savant is another matter altogether.

“The word idiot usually refers to a simpleton, in contrast to the word “savant” in French that means “learned one.” Idiot savants are a subgroup of a class of people called idiots with an IQ of about 25. Idiot savants are a group of humans that are incapable of learning, writing or reading, yet they have unlimited access to specific, accurate knowledge in the fields of mathematics, music, and other precise areas. Now the irony of an idiot-savant is that this group of individuals does not acquire knowledge by learning as the average human does. They mysteriously ‘know’ explicit, exact, correct information. One may wonder: “How do idiots savants know certain information or possess certain skills?” By whatever means they obtain this information, they undermine current definitions about intelligence. Does their knowledge show that a source of intelligence exists? Is it possible to tap into this source and not know of its existence?

Dr. Joseph C. Pearce states the following about the general nature of the idiot savant. “so far as can be observed, the savant has not acquired, could not acquire, and is quite incapable of acquiring, the information that he so liberally dispenses. If we furnish the savant with the proper stimulus, a question about the specialty, he gives the appropriate response, but can’t furnish himself with that stimulus, can’t develop the capacity as an intelligence and can’t move beyond his narrow limits (Evolution’s End, p. 5).”

There are all types of theories that try to explain how an illiterate and untrainable idiot can have access to unlimited accurate information in a certain field. Some theories try to explain the idiot savants by genetic and biological abnormalities. Howard Garndner in his book Frames of Mind believes that genetic and environment factors create idiot savants. Professor Garndner thinks that arithmetic calculations of the idiots savant are: “based upon the relative sparing or proliferation of certain brain areas: like hyperlexia, it represents an automatic, impossible-to-stop-process (p. 156),” This theory still does not explain how the people obtained this knowledge.

Other modern theories use the principles of quantum physics, specifically Bell’s theorem, to explain idiots savants.. Simply put, these theories define intelligence as “fields of potential,” in the same way that magnetic fields interact with iron filings. In this theory, an idiot savant’s brain receives this information directly from a non-local source forming these “fields of knowledge.”

Quoting Dr. Joseph C. Pearce in his book about the cause of the idiots savant, he says an idiot savant “is pre-disposed to the intelligence of his specialty through some early infant-childhood experience that activates a “field of neurons (brain cells) ” capable of translating from field of intelligence,” within narrow limits (Evolution’s End, p. 6).”
John Davidson in his book “The Formative Mind” writes about an idiot savant from Canada, Daniel. “Daniel’s forte is making electronic toys. But his methodology is bizarre. He simply sticks a transistor here, a resistor there, a capacitor somewhere else, a bulb in one corner and a switch in another. He does not even wire them together. They appear to be randomly glued on to a piece of perspex. Yet when he switches them on, the bulb lights up. In fact, when anyone switches them on, even when he is not in the room, and he is involved with something else, they light up. So any constant psychokinetic influence from Daniel’s mind is ruled out.

Clearly, Daniel can see, in his mind, the inner structure of energy patterns at the subatomic and vacuum state levels. Unhampered by preconceived ideas concerning what is and what is not possible, and working along the mind energy hierarchy into physical manifestation, he is simply rearanging the energy patterns of physical manifestation to do his bidding. From his point of view, he is simply playing with his toys and wants them to light up. With both a direct mental perception and manipulative capability, he arranges the structure of the vacuum state and its manifested subatomic particles to take on the patterns he desires.

Some of the scientists who have witnessed Daniel’s toys in operation and even taken them to their laboratories for testing, have been reduced to tears, stating that all that they had been taught and believed in appeared to have been turned upside down. – Perhaps, although he cannot explain himself as we might like, he is also trying to tell us something…”

I believe he is. So often we ignore people with disabilities, reject those who “dance to a different drumbeat”; but are they not showing us perspectives on our visions of reality that we could not have seen otherwise? They are giving us insights into our potential as Human beings. How clear it is how our differences help to reveal alternate aspects of our reality.

To add more food for thought on the subject of idiots and morons, I would like to quote from the following post.

But I always wonder if there is such thing as an IQ, I mean where would you place a person who works day and night, feeds his family, respects everyone, loves his family, does lots of great things for society, but at same time have a low IQ, to be honest for me the person would be a great living being compared to all the other people who have great IQ but are totally idiots.

Interestingly, ages are also added to the categories of classifying Idiots (below three years), Morons (seven to twelve years) and Imbeciles (three to seven years).

If we look at the areas of our lives where we act like idiots, Imbeciles, or Morons could it not point to the ages in our life’s passage where we received the wounds that we have not resolved in ourselves yet?

Somewhere in our distant past, one of our ancestors, or more likely a few at the same time, became aware. I feel… I?… Who, what am I? Since then, this question has set us on a search for an answer. But like a mirage appearing to the thirsty in the desert we seem to never be able to touch it. Like a rainbow that appears in the tears of our life, our insight to ourselves at times appear in its full glory. If only you can get to the end of the rainbow you can find the pot of gold. Then one day you realise that the pot of gold is the rainbow. Just the splendour of its beauty refreshes my being, make me feel alive. Does it matter who I am?

What is important is that I am and that I live my life as consciously as I can. I take pleasure in the myriad rainbow of colour, scents, tastes, sounds and touch that is living life. I have been given the gift of life, a flame so precious that where ever I find it I gasp in renewed awe for the miracle of it. That flame of life that resides in me, the now flickering, now dancing, now blazing flame that constitutes me, that flame burns equally in all things living. And where are the boundaries of my flame? Where are the boundaries of the living heat I emanate? Then I wonder is there any separation between my life flame and that of all other flames of life? Am I just a flame sparking brightly in an ocean of fire? Could I be the sun of another universe?

Life is the most basic component of what constitutes I. What I will be without it I speculate all I want but until I can be fully conscious all the time, I will never really know. Until then I will always have to question whether I am the dreamer or the dream. Just like Alice asked in the land through the looking glass, I have to ask how can I be a dream when I know I am. I can feel joy and pain. I can decide to do something, so I must be the dreamer and not the dream. But how many of the decision I make do I truly make out of my own will?

When you begin to realise how many subconscious factors influence your present decisions, you really begin to wonder how much in control you are of your life, your dream. How can you be in control of your life if you don’t know what you think you are, what influences that which you think you are? It is after all that which you think you are that makes the decisions in your life and so determine your future self. I thought I knew who and what I am.

After so many years of intensely exploring all the aspects of what I thought I was, I thought I knew, but I was lost in the myth of that which I thought I was. From a young age we create a myth about ourselves. We fashion this myth from our early experiences of our interaction with the world around us. For the rest of our lives, unless we ask ourselves what is my personal myth we live our life according to our personal myth. If we do not like the way the story of our myth is unfolding we have to change our motivational myth, but first we must uncover just what our personal myth is.

How do we then find the origins and the mystery of our personal myth? The hero must enter the dark caverns of the underworld, look beyond the masking myth of which we think we are. In the hidden shadows of our being, that part of ourselves that we hide so carefully from others, there lies the Grail cup of our healing. “The theme of the Grail Romance is that the land, the country, the whole territory of concern has been laid waste. It is called a wasteland. And what is the nature of the wasteland? It is a land where everybody is living an inauthentic life, doing as other people do, doing as you’re told, with no courage for your own life. That is the wasteland … The Grail becomes the – what can we call it? – That which is attained and realised by people who have lived their own lives. The Grail represents the fulfilment of the highest spiritual potentialities of the human consciousness.” Joseph Campbell – The Power of Myth

Why is it so hard for us to be the confident Hero of our lives? Because we belief we are the mask we project but at the same time we know that the disowned part of ourselves is alive and well, and will someday break through the prison of our mask, exposing that which we have disowned. We fear that, that hidden part of ourselves is a hideous monster and by exposing it to the light the ugliness of ourselves will be revealed and we will be shunned by those around us, those whose love and whose approval we seek. But this is just an illusion we created; we are like the ugly old hag that turns into the most beautiful woman when we kiss her with acceptance, even in her ugliness.

Physical beauty without inner beauty is like a rose without a scent. Intelligence without wisdom, a form without purpose. Just so the beauty of ourselves will not blossom in sweet scent unless nurtured and rooted in the richly composted soil of our shadows. John Carroll in his book “the/ western/ dreaming” Describes soul love, “A hallmark of soul-mate love is that any enquiry about who you are, what you have done or where you have been is entirely superfluous. It is the I am in another, hardly needing to speak, but to acknowledge with gratitude and awe: I am known. Someone walks beside me. Then each to each on their journey of journeys, they may repeat: Courage. I am. Don’t fear!”

Just so it is with self-love from which flows all other love and life.

In exploring the unknown you will get lost if your intent is not clear. Think of it like you would about a wish, as they say, “be careful what you wish for.”

“There is no act in the universe that is superior to the act of believing, and there is no power that is greater than intent. In truth they are but the two sides of the same coin, and what binds them together is emotion … If, on the other hand, a man has a belief which is charged with emotion, he will go to extraordinary lengths to uphold and defend that belief. Should such a man consider that a particular belief to be essential to his continued wellbeing, then he will choose to die rather than relinquish his belief…However, since the apprentice is not planning to die, but instead to escape the confines of his view of the world, he does the only thing which is possible for him to do – he chooses to believe that it is possible to escape. Since such an escape is the only thing that matters to the apprentice, his decision becomes charged with emotion. It is through this emotion that he first of all manages to activate his intent, and then ultimately to set upon escaping…” – Theun Mares

Intent seeks to unite the unknown with the known. The unknown expresses the purpose of awareness through intent.

To perform effective ‘magic’ three necessities must be present; the need, the emotion, and the knowledge. To help attract, arouse and direct. Magic really just means to materialise something from the unknown. This I found can be applied to any earthly concerns. Need can be replaced with the word ‘intent’ because it directs the awareness (the focus) as well as the activity. The way not to make focus into a hard labour is to use it as if you are looking forward to something special, something pleasurable about to happen. Then your focus is immediately there. Focus brings into awareness what you choose to experience. A decision making, assertive communication. This automatically makes your awareness selective, to fulfil the intent. Energy goes where attention goes.

Children learn to walk, talk and interact with the world by following their intent, which is in turn born out of following the scent of their pleasure, hunger. So for me intent can also be seen as an internal hunger.

Rudolf Steiner likened destiny to a hunger: “The human being, when he is born, hungers to do what he does, and he does not give up until he satisfies this hunger.”

When we feel a physical hunger, it dominates our choices. When we long for the fulfilment of sexual desire, an appeasement of hunger, there can be no denial of our orientation. Real spiritual desire is a raw as these. We are born with a hunger of some kind that needs fulfilment. It is this hunger that steers our destiny.

The hunger becomes the ‘intent’ because it directs the awareness (the focus) as well as the activity. Focus brings into awareness what you choose to experience. Which automatically makes your awareness selective, to fulfil the intent.

I often used to lament that we are not born with a personal manual to guide our unfolding self. Since then I have realised that we are indeed born with a personal manual. Clues for keys to our unfolding is already present within us before we are even born. With our first breath of life, our intent for our unfolding starts to drive us. Just as the dormant seed awakens and start to push its way through the soil, through cracks, around rock and stones. Clues to our individual paths reveals itself through our intent.